


Fear

by ryucreates



Series: Drabbles cause im tired and writing [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Surrealism, angst???, im back at it again )))
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:13:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27626600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryucreates/pseuds/ryucreates
Summary: Little thing i wrote for my english class
Series: Drabbles cause im tired and writing [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019890





	Fear

I think I first noticed them around a year ago- the floating in my brain is easy to remember, hard to forget. There’s a subtle feeling to it, like flower ed vines re aching up your throat- an eerie chorus settling next to your heart, wrapping  ‘round the blood vessels like tangled rope around a still form.

Maybe it started before that- maybe this whole event is a ruse, mayhap I’m not even in the present, the present I think I am in nothing more than a  farse, a lie to keep me together. 

The feeling can’t be  quantified as fear, I think. It's more waving tendrils of wrongness, spiraling through your soul until even your lungs cannot draw life from your mangled throat \- it's just that, it’s just wrong.

_ I think, I think, I think- all we do is think. We only ever think. Can’t we act? Can't we go out there, face our anxiety head on, and conquer it like so many others? _ _ Can't we win, just this once? _

The voices in my head have gotten louder- by now I’ve named them. It’s been half a year, with the strands of life wrapped around my pinky finger, subtle and delicate blooms arching up-  _ phototropic,  _ he says- pointing face first to the sky.

It’s not just him, now. He has more, more friends, more faces to commit to memory. I try, and I succeed. For a while, I am happy.

_ We cannot move forward without first taking a step back. We mustn’t give up the rise just for the starting fall- after all, this is only the beginning. _

This one is different than before- his words cold and callous, snipped and sutured together like the world’s most dissonant harmony- terrible in its etherealness. He’s blunt, like what I wish to be. 

I name him Ire, and the other Rye.

There’s more to this, and I’m not certain how much I wish to know.

I met the third not long after.

It all started with a mask- after all, what better to hide the split in your psyche than to hide your face? 

I t’s simple, really- the strings connecting flaps and bands- stitching on both the seams and the skin on my face- fractured webs sewn back together, sutures like cross stitch running down the cleft of my chin. He wears the mask like I so oft do not- wet lips, silent breaths, the eerie chill running down my back like I’ve just left the shower- like it in of itself is the identity, the person beneath connected to the mask like the threading I described.

I catch him in profiles sometimes, standing in my peripherals like an undying ghost. He’s not scary, per se, more just. . . uninvited. 

He stands, never looking at me, but I feel his gaze. It’s like there’s something under there, under the mask- I can only wish and hope that one day he’ll take it off, talk to me for once, interact like a real person should- 

But he won’t.

He’s quiet and doesn’t take the mask off. Ever. 

I call him Eye.

I think that maybe, just maybe, life improves after that.  I’m alone, stuck in a room with no walls but a cage like feel- a simple platform. I’m four feet from the ground, but even as such my feet feel hundreds of miles up. I’m not scared of heights, just scared of the impact.

Is that true for all of me? For them, who  _ are _ me? For those three or four, five, six, or more, are we all scared of the aftermath? Do I abstain from argu ments not to be calm, but to save my own skin?

I don’t know.

Maybe that’s it, the not knowing part.

Maybe it’s the nothingness that gets me, in the end. The dark and swirling void- except it isn’t dark, it’s  not anything at all- there are no colors, no greyscales, no blacks and no whites.  I think maybe it’s the absence. The lack of life in the limb o between worlds-  the black hole in space time, in the multiverse altogether.

It’s a circle of balancing, tight ropes underneath my feet, both sides are life- just one is after. I guess if I fall, I’ll fall into madness- I know not, I’ve kept my footing. 

I suppose  _ they _ help with that, in a way- voices acting as staves of support, widening my ropes until I am but a squirrel on the tree of life- Yggdrasil, northern mythology, the world tree. It’s said that the branches lead to all the nine realms, and that every plant connects to it, shares its life. 

If I fall into the below, will I too grow roots?

The spirits, the voices in my brain come out sometimes- I jokingly compare them to people at the wheel to a car. I press the gas, but they have the steering and the breaks \- nothing is mine to control except the acceleration. Sometimes I feel like they’ve crashed, flipped over and over until nothing’s left but crumpled metal and  the still playing radio on the dash. 

I suppose my whole life has been some sort of wreck- never stayed in one place for long, mentality, sexuality, gender, location. I keep itinerary, keep charge and check and balance of every single transaction- I laugh to myself as I say this, and Id, the newest, laughs back. 

He’s a bright one, brighter than all the others. Maybe he’s the turn signal, I think to myself. Maybe he’s who tells me how to do something, what to do, and when to do it. 

Maybe he’s my dashboard, smashed to pieces yet still singing as best as he can.

I think maybe the voices aren’t problematic at this point- perhaps they never were. Perception is a ruddy thing, filled with blood and fervor and make rash like hives. 

The voices, Id, Ire, Eye and Rye- two lurking, back of my mind- they never move when I speak. Id fidgets, watches under my gaze like female wolves guarding their mates, and acts only when prompted. 

He’s so bright, my turn signal, my shattered dash- he's so bright, glowing in his enthusiasm, in his meaningless tasks around my mind, my car, my ship.

He’ll make me laugh, make me cry- turn around, look at all my actions, helpless and asking why- he's there, always. He’s ever-present,  _ S _ _ tand  _ _ by _ __ _ M _ _ e _ , Ben E. King. 

_ Bite it. _

He urges me, sometimes-

_ Do it, just- just imagine how that would feel in your mouth. Just- please just bite it, please, I’m literally begging you to please bite it- _

I’m playing Fallout, my brother beside me, playing some game with his friends- I suppose this is home, the inane urges to digest graphics looms dangerously over my mind- Id's doing, I suspect. I’m not sure how one would eat a virtual object, and although I wish to try, I’m afraid nothing would come of it.

He wasn’t very happy about that, but-  _ Microphone? _

Jesus. I’m not even  Christian , and I’m saying his name. 

Living life in this way, I think- this haunting melody of the people in my ears- it's like living with an earbud, an agent out on the field with a whole team behind him monitoring his com. I feel safer than I ever have before.

That isn’t to say my car doesn’t crash anymore- I flip over daily, windows rocking and music stuttering, the seatbelt choking me for the mere seconds I’m suspended over my head- just that it’s never like that  for long. I flip over, my car intact, myself intact, emergency brake pulled as soon as my wheels touch ground.

So maybe it isn’t the presence that’s ultimately bothering- maybe it’s the inability to act, whether by force, or simply due to bodily functions. Maybe it’s the inherent expectations of it happening,  surrounded on all sides , no way out. Maybe it’s the paralyzing feeling that grips the chest that gets me- blue ringed octopi all around me,  swarming in palm sized droves. 

Maybe the rings are  symbolic , I know not.

Maybe the voices are permanent, I know not.

I know they mean more than what I see- their tilted heads and quizzical expressions convey more unsettling feelings than they do comforting, but I don’t mind.

I don’t think anything bothers me, when I'm like this-

_ You don’t seriously believe that, do you? Do you eat all your lies like dessert? Do you down the farces like nothing more than a rat down  _ _ an _ _ owl’s gullet? Do you partake in the forgetting? Will  _ _ you forget us? Put aside like the bones of your old life? _

Picking the pockets of life is not my way, I think. It’s better to live happy, in a cardboard box, than live lonely in a walled off castle \-  _ Nowhere  _ _ w _ _ ith Love _ _ ,  _ Harry Connick Jr. 

Maybe the voices are right, maybe I’ll forget them like I do so much else. 

Maybe they’ll die in this limbo, this quiet place I retreat to every day. Maybe it’s fated, maybe it’s by my own hand, my own creations, left to rise and fall with a twitch of my eyelids. Left to die by the subconscious movements of my mind.

After all, nothing lives in the void- least of all me.


End file.
